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Labor bounces back in latest Newspoll

TONY EASTLEY: The Prime Minister Julia Gillard returns to work today after a week off to some good news.

The latest Newspoll shows a bounce back in the Labor Party's primary vote.

Sabra Lane is our chief political correspondent.

Sabra, good morning. What's the figure and how important is this?

SABRA LANE: Well Tony the primary vote is up five points from a low of 28 per cent in the last poll taken a fortnight ago. So now the figure is 33 points, that's up five points. The poll's margin of error is 3 per cent, so that's a big jump, but really it hasn't translated too much of an impact on the party's two-party preferred figure. Labor still faces an electoral wipe out at 46 per cent compared to 54 for the Coalition.

So in those terms the jump makes little difference but the bounce might give the Prime Minister a psychological boost amid all this chatter about the leadership.

TONY EASTLEY: I guess they'd take any increase as long as it's an increase. What do you think is the reason for this bounce Sabra?

SABRA LANE: Well maybe the Prime minister Should have holidays more often Tony. She did have a week off last week. And with the Olympics on, federal politics really didn't feature that prominently in the news.

Also before going on leave, the Prime Minister secured an agreement from five of the states in rolling out a trial of the National Disability Insurance Scheme, so maybe that's a factor here too. But the party's polling didn't have anywhere to go really but up. As a Gillard critic pointed out to me after the last poll, he said it was almost certain the party would experience a bounce in this poll because really it couldn't get much lower.

Interestingly, Tony Abbott is two points ahead of Prime Minister Gillard as the preferred prime minister at 38 points to 36, with 26 per cent, that's one in four voters, unsure about who is actually the better person for the job.

TONY EASTLEY: The Prime Minister is back at work today I note and she's in the process of picking another fight with the states, this time over electricity prices is it?

SABRA LANE: Yeah she's come back to work with her boxing gloves on. She's delivering a major speech on electricity prices in Sydney amid the effective carbon tax campaign that's been run by Tony Abbott, and the mantra of prices going up and up and up.

Ms Gillard will say that power price hikes that people have witnessed over last couple of years, five years, can't continue. And she's blaming unfinished market reforms for this and price gouging by the state governments.

She will say Australia didn't need 50 per cent price increases for households over the past four years and they can't afford them again; that many state governments own electricity assets and regulate the market and that they've been price gouging.

The can see the Opposition though attacking her for this, saying that she wants to blame everyone else for the increases of the effect of the carbon tax, and also why did the Prime Minister stay silent on this while Labor was in office in those states?

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